Tag: Jim Broadbent

‘Topsy-Turvy’ – Gilbert and Sullivan reborn on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Academy Award, art and artists, based on a true story, biographical, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, Have You Seen...?, historical, movies about theater, Streaming Movies, SVOD 06/01/202106/01/2021 Sean Axmaker

Set in the world of London theater in the mid-1880s, Topsy-Turvy (1999) tackles the creative partnership between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, the reigning kings of light operetta, at a turning in their career. Their work has become repetitive, their latest show a disappointment, and the partnership is under strain as composer Sullivan (Allan […]

‘Hot Fuzz’ – British mystery meets Hollywood action on HBO Max and HBO Now

!Featured, Action, Blu-ray, Comedy, Cult Movies, DVD, Have You Seen...?, HBO Max, Mystery, satire, Streaming Movies, SVOD 12/14/202012/15/2020 Sean Axmaker

A couple of Thanksgivings ago, as the family hung out the few hours before dinner, my brother and I started telling my dad why he would like Hot Fuzz (2007), a film that otherwise doesn’t appear to be his cup of English tea. It was from the guys who made Shaun of the Dead and […]

Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, and others star in the film by Lana and Lilly (formerly Andy) Wachowski and Tom Tykwer

‘Cloud Atlas’ – storytelling across centuries

!Featured, based on a novel, Blu-ray, Cult Movies, drama, DVD, Have You Seen...?, historical, literary adaptation, Science Fiction, SVOD 07/01/202001/04/2021 Sean Axmaker

Cloud Atlas (2012) wants nothing for ambition. Jumping between six distinctive stories in six different eras, with a cast that plays different (yet connected) parts in the various storyline, it’s at once literal and evasive, a film that wears its heart on its beautifully stitched sleeve and its meaning in its design and yet finds […]

Hiromasa Yonebayashi directs the animated fantasy based on the children's novel by British author Mary Stewart

‘Mary and the Witch’s Flower’ – a magical odyssey on Netflix

!Featured, Animation, Blu-ray, DVD, family friendly, fantasy, Kid Stuff, literary adaptation, Netflix, Streaming Movies 07/17/2018 Sean Axmaker

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Japan, 2017), the magical fantasy by Japanese animator and filmmaker Hiromasa Yonebayashi (director of the marvelous When Marnie Was There), based on a children’s novel by British author Mary Stewart, follows the adventures of a schoolgirl who receives magical powers for a day from a magical flower that blooms once […]

Charlie Hunnam stars in the 2002 'Nicholas Nickleby' from director Douglas McGrath

Blu-ray: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ on Twilight Time

Blu-ray, Blu-ray review, historical, Twilight Time 01/15/201701/15/2017 Sean Axmaker

Nicholas Nickleby (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) (2002) – You can’t fault Douglas McGrath for his ambition. Determined to bring Charles Dickens’ 900 page semi-autobiographical novel to the screen, he condenses, chops, and briskly skips through what’s left of a dense pattern of improbably colorful characters, and still winds up with a Dickens of a tale. The […]